Springing From a Darkened Mind
by kosmokomik
Summary: Oneshot. After the ending at the Citadel, Shepard has a dream. Kaidan listens as she tells him how the galaxy will end.


**Notes:** Rough draft written in under an hour in response to the weekly prompt (_"I had a dream last night" in 40 minutes_) over at the LJ community cues, then refined. Female Shepard and Kaidan Alenko, after the destruction of Sovereign. Shepard had a dream and Kaidan lets her tell it.

Title from "The Lake" by Antony & the Johnsons.

* * *

"I had a dream last night."

He turned his head towards her. She had been lying incapacitated in the hospital after having risen from the wreckage of the Citadel tower, smiling in her delirious happiness at having conquered death once again. The adrenaline rush had worn off quickly though, and she had given in to the injuries and pains a mere minute after having peeled off her armour, collapsing on the cot.

"I dreamt of the end. I see how they end, over and over again, and then the sky is filled with Reapers, a blackened, charred sky. The worlds burn."

He slipped off the cot he'd been sitting on while watching her, and crossed the room with slow, agonizing steps, his knee not yet fully healed. He had thrown himself, along with Tali, down the stairs, hiding at an angle where they screamed for Shepard to follow: instead, debris had covered them, and all they could do was wait. Tali had had a piece of shrapnel lodged into her side; he had given her some medi-gel to protect her from further infection. They hadn't been able to do anything about his knee though, and had fallen silent, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

"I hear the end, like they must have heard it. I can't describe the noise of the indoctrination as it bores away through my mind, peeling away all semblance of self, until I become a mindless husk, roaming a dead world. The only thought in me is to find something to kill, to turn over to them, but it truly is a dead world. Nothing will exist there ever again."

She shifted on the bed as he stood next to it, holding her hand gingerly, his thumb circling over the scar she had across her knuckles.

When they had been in bed together, she had told him where each scar on her body originated from. The one on her lower lip? A bar brawl when she had been seventeen, fighting for her alcohol-fueled honor in a dingy little shithole. The one covering her chin, trailing down slightly onto her right collarbone? She had been twenty-four, fighting off a mercenary that had slammed her into a wall.

She seemed to be a map of stories.

"Those parts of the dreams are okay, though. Relatively. Then it grows worse. I see Earth, its dead cities silent. The streets where I mugged people, once so full of life, are empty. I'm walking these streets, guns strapped to my back, as I scan the surroundings for a survivor. Any sign, any trace, that someone else lived."

She still looked strong and stubborn, fighting her way through the morphine-mists to tell him this. Was she aware that he was there?

"And then, I am Tali, returning to her Flotilla in a shuttle. When I reach the coordinates, all I see is destruction. A thousand ships, empty of life, broken and drifting in the hollowness of space. I am Wrex, being shot at by my own people, and as the bullets hit me I rage against them, full of fury at them for giving up every chance of hope. I am Garrus, helmet on, floating through zero-gravity at the Citadel, surveying the destruction of the Wards, shooting husks that flail about. I am Liara, isolating myself in a Prothean ruin on an asari colony. Outside, the husks of Benezia's followers are clawing at the door, trying to find a way in."

She had been unnerved when Saren had given up and shot himself, thanking her with a strange expression. Possibly a wry, turian smile.

Now she was unnerving him, reminding him of the burden she had shouldered through the visions that had entered her mind. She was the only link spanning fifty thousand years, the only one who could possibly save the galaxy.

"And I am you, Kaidan," she said, turning her head to look at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I am you, and I stand on the shores of Vancouver, throwing my gun to the side as a migraine strums up in my head. I fought my way through a darkened wasteland, hoping they had escaped, only to have to shoot my own parents as they attacked me."

He shuddered.

"And I am me again. All around me is a wasteland. And Saren stands before me, shooting his brains out."

It must have been what Saren saw, he realized, the complete destruction of everything he knew. He wondered how she could deal with it. How she could go on walking, talking, surviving, with such a bruden crushing her spine.

"But I don't want to follow him. Because still, despite having lost everything, I want to save everyone."

She smiled up at him, a smile signifying that she had conquered her own fears, and slipped away from consciousness again. He stayed by her side, holding her hand, looking at her eased face as she slept. Then, he felt the corners of his mouth twitch, and he had to smile, too.


End file.
